REVEALED: Check if your house is at risk of flooding

Darren Burke

Households and businesses in Doncaster have been given access to a powerful new tool to help them check for flood risks to their home.

Data from the Environment Agency has been combined with mapping and postcode details to allow speedy and easy to understand use of flood area information which, for the first time, has been made available as ‘open’ data.

The website CheckMyFloodRisk.co.uk allows users to precisely pinpoint their distance from known risks of flooding from rivers and the sea.

Overlaid on an interactive map, users can input a post code or address and see its proximity to flood risks – with greater pinpoint accuracy possible by dragging the ‘pin’ over any property or location – the risk and distance to the nearest flood zone is then automatically displayed.

Combined with the company’s proactive FloodAlerts live flood warning system (developed with the Environment Agency) and its live river and tide level gauge monitor, GaugeMap, there is now a suite of free products which put critical flood data in the hands of users.

The service is expected to be popular with people who think their homes might be at risk, those in the process of buying property or businesses which need to assess risks to their sites and other assets.

Back in 2007, unprecedented rain caused floods to sweep through Doncaster, submerging 2,127 homes across 36 areas, with Toll Bar the mostly badly affected area with scores of homes and businesses being submerged.

Managing director of Shoothill, Rod Plummer, explained: “This hugely valuable dataset became freely available only very recently as part of the Environment Agency’s continued commitment to the UK’s Open Data initiative. By using our previous expertise in flood mapping, and in the presentation of big data in easy to understand formats, we’ve been able to make this information easily accessible to everyone. In doing so, we’ve also completed a suite of products, with FloodAlerts and GaugeMap, which allow for proactive flood alerts, live monitoring from rivers and the sea and now a more general checking of an area’s flood profile.

“We can easily imagine this becoming a standard check that people do before buying property, just like running a search on broadband availability or school catchment areas. Now, anyone can check their flood risk in seconds and we will keep the data updated in step with the Environment Agency releasing amended versions to it in the years ahead.”